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Step 1
Use these terms for understanding:
Shutter: Flap in front of the lens (like your eyelid).
Shutter button: button you press to take the picture.
Shutter Speed: speed that the shutter opens and closes.
Motion: the blurring effect from a subject moving creating the sense of motion in the picture.
Stabilization or Vibration sensors: sensor settings that will help eliminate blur caused by camera movement.
Focal length: the mm size such as 50mm.
Noise: black or multi-colored dots that appear in pictures, especially in darker areas. -
Step 2
Know some basics.
The slower your shutter speed is set to, the more light your camera will be exposed to and vice versa. Put simply, slowing the shutter speed increases exposure and can also increase the chances for noise and allow more motion to show in the picture.
The shutter speed determines the length of time the shutter is open. Shutter speed is measured in seconds or fraction of seconds. The bigger denominator the faster the speed, 1/1000 is a fast speed. Shutter speed time will double or be halved with each setting. Example: a speed of 1/30 would let in twice the light of 1/60 and a speed of 1/125 would let in half the amount of light as 1/60.
You will not change your exposure when you change your shutter and aperture the same distance. Example: if you slow your shutter speed from 1/60 to 1/30 and also make your aperture smaller from 6 to 8, you will not change the exposure but it might change motion or depth of field.
Artificial lighting can allow you to use faster shutter speeds and prevent blurring. -
Step 3
Know when you want fast or slow shutter speeds:
When setting the speed, ask yourself these questions: Is anything moving? How would you like to capture the movement?
You will want to use faster shutter speeds in highlight situations, sports, highly lit or bright areas, and where you to eliminate the blur of moving objects (freeze the object).
You will want to use slower shutter speeds when you want to focus on highlights, in dimly lit areas like forests, and where you want the blur to convey motion in scenes like waterfalls, race cars, and star scenes. Conveying motion is best done in low light, since bright lights require faster shutter speeds.
Extremely low shutter speeds such as settings of 1 second or higher are for very low light, special effects, or capturing lots of movement.
If your shutter speed ends up being too fast, your picture will come out underdeveloped (dark), and if it is too slow it will be overdeveloped (bright). -
Step 4
You should support your shutter:
Do this by using a tripod, especially with long exposures. This will help eliminate blur caused by camera motion (not a good blur). Stabilization sensors and vibration reduction will also help with camera movement blur. The slower you set your shutter speed, the longer any subject that can move will need to remain still.
When you have long focal lengths on your lenses, it will create more camera shake and require faster shutter speeds to reduce blurring. Use shutter speeds with larger denominators than focal length. For example, if you have a focal length of 50mm you would want to use a shutter speed of 1/60 or faster -
Step 5
Know your settings:
At night you can use bulb mode (B) usually found in manual exposure mode if available. This is where the shutter remains open as long as you hold down the shutter button. This can increase noise; use raw images or noise reduction to decrease noise.
You can use the manual setting (M) to adjust the shutter speed and aperture values separately. This is a full control method.
However, there are semi-control methods: shutter priority and aperture priority. Shutter priority will let you set the shutter speed and then will automatically set the aperture value.
Comments
sonni57 said
on 9/26/2009 I am so lost when it comes to digital cameras I broke mine when I dropped it. Thanks for the good info maybe I will get another one.